Lucario (Agility) (QC 0/3) WIP

Hey guys, Tabuu here. Recently, I've been growing quite an interest in Agility Lucario. With PKGaming's permission, I've decided to write an analysis on just how effective it is. I left out the Overview and Checks&Counters section. The original analysis already has it and I don't think I need to rewrite another one. However if it is required let me know. Anyways, onto the Analysis!
-Tabuu

THIS ANALYSIS IS UNDER WORK. CURRENTLY EVERYTHING IS BEING "SKELETON-IZED"​

[SET COMMENTS]
<p>While Swords Dance Lucario focuses on sweeping with brute strength and priority, in the form of ExtremeSpeed and Bullet Punch, Agility Lucario plays a little differently. Thanks to Agility, it can hit a speed stat of 558 with an Adamant Nature, outspeeding practically every OU Scarfer there is. Due to its high speed, it no longer needs to take up a moveslot with ExtremeSpeed. In its place, Lucario can afford the ever so needed coverage to take down various threats that Swords Dance Lucario would struggle to fight against.</p>

<p>Agility defines this set and thus Agility must be used. Agility allows Lucario to reach insane speeds, throwing Lucario into what the OU metagame calls Speed Tier 0, the fastest speed tier in the game. Close Combat is also a no-brainer. With STAB and its high 120 base power, Close Combat is a beautiful move capable of devastating Pokemon and ruining them for good. Ice Punch allows Lucario to break through Gliscor and OHKO all of the genies after Stealth Rock damage, except Landorus-Therian, who still receives a lovely 2HKO. Ice Punch also allows Lucario to OHKO Salamence and OHKO Dragonite if Multiscale is broken. Crunch is the final move and is primarily used to KO Ghost and Psychic types that are able to tank Close Combats and Ice Punch. Crunch achieves an OHKO on Latios after Stealth Rock, while Latias gets 2HKO’d. However, Latias struggles to OHKO Lucario in return and when pitted against Lucario in a 1v1 situation, Lucario will most likely win it out. Gengar and (non-sashed) Alakazam take the OHKO as well.</p>

[ADDITIONAL COMMENTS]
<p>As Lucario is a sweeper, he should be running maximum Attack and Speed investments for maximized sweeping potential. Life Orb is pretty mandatory as it grants Lucario additional power to smash through teams. Expert Belt does become an option due to the great coverage that Lucario has access to. Expert Belt allows Lucario to live longer and not take recoil damage from Life Orb. However, note that since Lucario lacks Swords Dance, Lucario will really struggle with certain Pokemon if it forfeits Life Orb. Thus, Expert Belt really is the lesser option. Plus, Lucario isn’t meant to stick around for that long anyway; he has that “Kill everything ASAP” sort of mentality. A Jolly Nature is useless as it doesn’t outspeed any significant Pokemon and only makes Lucario lose more power.

<p>As is with the Swords Dance set, Hi Jump Kick is always an option. Thanks to its stupidly high 130 base power, it is able to OHKO Specs Politoed after Rocks and has a very high chance of OHKOing Keldeo after Rocks as well. CB Scizor also faces a risk of an OHKO after Rocks, from Hi Jump Kick. However, Hi Jump Kick’s flaw is very detrimental. If it misses, Lucario will take a nice 50% of its HP off. Add in Life Orb Recoil and Lucario won’t be sticking around long enough to sweep. Also, Pokemon like Jellicent and Gengar enjoy switching into Lucario; thus Hi Jump Kick is a very high risk, high reward kind of move. Use it with great caution.</p>

<p>Lucario’s ability comes down to preference. Justified is the superior choice as getting a +1 Attack Boost off of a .25 resisted move it always a plus. Inner Focus is decent and may assist in defeating Scarfed Jirachi easier. Steadfast is viable too until one notices that flinches mainly come from Jirachi, who also loves carrying Body Slam, for ParaFlinch haxes.</p>

<p>In terms of teammates, Lucario has some bestfriends. Latias is a big one, being able to tank all of the Fighting, Fire, and Ground moves aimed at Lucario. In return, Lucario is able to nab a +1 off any Dark moves aimed at Latias, and is generally able to set-up on Latias’ checks and counters, such as Tyranitar, Scizor, Blissey, Chansey, Ferrothorn, and so forth. While synergistically speaking, they are terrible, Choice Banded Tyranitar brings in a lot of support for Lucario. Lucario is unable to defeat Jellicent, Slowbro, and Reuniclus reliably 1v1. However, Tyranitar can easily eliminate all of those Pokemon thanks to his mighty STAB Crunch and Pursuit. Rotom-W is another amazing partner for Lucario. Resisting Lucario’s Fire Weakness and being immune to Ground Type moves, Rotom-W can switch into Gliscor with little fear except Toxic. Rotom-W can then proceed to HP Ice or Hydro Pump the poor bat into oblivion. Jellicent and Slowbro are easily worn down by Rotom-W through Volt Switches and Thunderbolts. Once they are weakened, Lucario can easily KO them with Crunch. Finally, Slowbro and Celebi make great partners as they are able to take on Conkeldurr and TechniLoom, respectively. Lucario really loves entry hazard support and cannot be too successful without them. Stealth Rock is mandatory turning numerous 2HKOs into OHKOs. For Lucario, 1 layer of Spikes is all he really needs, as after Stealth Rock and Spike damage, Keldeo and Politoed are easily OHKO’d.</p>

mention gothitelle as one of lucario's best partners! eliminates gliscor/landorus-t/hippowdown with HP ice (even has grass knot for hippo if needed) can hit flying types with thunderbolt and can even trap and kill gengar with a scarf equipped so that lucario can launch hi jump kicks without worry.

also, i'd remove the sentence where you state that you are using agility because agility is the gist of the set, i think its fairly obvious to anyone that reads the name of this lucario set

I don't really get why this set was removed from the smogon analysis in the first place, but yea agility lucario is a great set that can function just as well/better than SD lucario in a more offensive meta.

Moderator

O.k first, you want HP Ice slashed with Ice Punch. HP Ice lets you get past Gliscor without SR + a tiny bit of residual damage) / Landorus-T, while Ice Punch is getting you past Thundurus / Torn. Ice Punch is better (tho only having a 25% chance to OHKO Gliscor after SR is a bit of a let down) and so should be slashed first.

Second, for this to go even further, hazard support MUST be stressed. Lucario has a nice 110 base Atk stat, but it needs hazards to sweep with Agility. Period.

Thirdly for this to get approvals, you need to address the big reason why it was not given a set in the recent Lucario update. The reason being why you would use this over SD. SD Lucario allows it to get past defensive walls that Agility Lucario has no chance at beating. For instance, you have no chance in hell of breaking through Tentacruel in the rain (which is going to be a massive problem as its going to spin your hazards), It cannot beat Hippowdon, or Volcarona, or Skarmory. Jellicent can still handle you quite well provided it doesn't come in on a Crunch, and you fail to OHKO the standard bulky psychic pokemon out there, such as Celebi and the (rare) Reuniclus which can eat a hit just fine. LO Latias can take a Crunch after SR too, and nail you with HP Fire or whatever. Sure, its dying from LO right after, but the point is that you need a fair amount of residual damage on a number of pokemon before you can even begin to sweep.

This isn't a problem SD Lucario doesn't have. If its getting a free turn to SD, if your slower than it, you are most likely dead or severely crippled. +2 LO ES does a number on most scarfers anyway, as well as faster pokemon such as Tornadus-T. ES also allows you to outprio TechLoom and Mach Punch Infernape, something Agility Lucario WILL lose to, and it has Bullet Punch if you are really worried about Terrakion and Gengar.

The draw of Agility, is that it can get a lot of coverage as possible, which SD sorta lacks. It has to pick and choose between Ice Punch / Crunch / ES / Bullet Punch for its move choices, so if this gets approved be sure to mention this advantage over SD. personally, when I tested Agility Lucario, it was very sub par and I disliked just how hazard reliant it was, when I could have used SD Lucario and abused those same hazards a lot better (due to many pokemon being nailed by +2 CC / ES with hazard damage thrown in). I won't reject this, but as of now you need to promote why I would pick it over SD, which in most cases is the stronger set.

You absolutely cannot write up an analysis before its been QC approved, since it makes it harder for the QC team to examine it/approve it. Please scrap what you have so far and revert it into a skeleton.

Anyway, if Agility Lucario wants to succeed in BW OU its going to need to lean hard on the hazards. Deoxys-D and Spinblockers need to have a prominent mention throughout the analysis, since Agility Lucario simply can't function without their support. Gothitelle is another good teammate choice, since it takes care of Agility Lucario's counters, hassle free.

There needs to be less hype in the analysis. For example, I'd hardly call Lucario's Close Combat beautiful, in fact its rather weak on this set! (This is a perfect example of why you shouldn't write the analysis up before this has been approved). You need to emphasis that Agility Lucario is all about Speed control & coverage. Swords Dance is much more stronger and more effective, but it flat out fails against a group of threats depending on its moveset. With Agility you're guaranteed to succeed against nearly everything (albeit with a much lower damage output), since you have your STAB and coverage moves to work with against faster threats.

Whew. I guess the first ones will always be a challenge ._.
Alrighty, this thread will go through some major changes I assure you. And I will make sure that all of your advice is incorporated into my mid-night(literally) creation...
Thank you for being patient with my newbie attempt.

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tags below your skeleton (which I presume you're in the process of making).

Due to the lack of Swords Dance, I would definitely slash Hi Jump Kick after Close Combat. It allows you to KO Skarmory after Stealth Rock and Hippowdon after a layer of Spikes.

Get rid of Expert Belt entirely. You need the power from Life Orb, and Lucario's coverage, unlike its fellow Steel-type speed booster (Genesect), isn't based on hitting the opponent's Pokemon supereffectively. It is mainly based on the power from its fighting-type STAB.

Mention Salamence and Dragonite as partners. They attract Scarfed Hidden Power Ices (from Keldeo.. occasionally Rotom-W) which gives Lucario the turn it needs to Agility.

Update:
Guys I am so sorry for my slow progress. I'm sick and it's midterms right now, and as a student, schools gotta come first :/
Sadly I haven't been able to battle or post on Smogon regularly like I used to. Please be a little more patient and I promise you results :)

Agility Lucario is a very interesting idea and I have had success with it as a cleaner. With hazard support and wallbreakers like Terrakion and Keldeo as partners, it can really do some work. However, it can do little more than clean up late game. It lacks the power of Swords Dance for breaking down walls like Skarmory and ExtremeSpeed for doing a number on other priority users (think Technician Breloom) and revenge killing weakened threats even when unboosted in the mid game. Also, it is reliant on the above support to be able to effectively do its job.

However, Agility Lucario does have its advantages over Swords Dance Lucario. It doesn't have to choose which pokemon counter it as it only requires two coverage moves to beat everything it needs to. It doesn't have to rely on ExtremeSpeed or Bullet Punch (which it won't always have) to beat faster pokemon like Lati@s, Terrakion, Garchomp and pokemon holding Choice Scarf like Salamence and Politoed. With its speed after Agility, Lucario can and will cleave through weakened teams with Close Combat, using its superior coverage to eliminate any threats that are still standing.

Personally I think that Agility Lucario and Swords Dance Lucario fulfil different niches and can therefore both be viable in the OU metagame. Make sure to emphasise entry hazard support for Lucario as that is a must when using Agility, along with strong recommendations for wallbreaking partners, especially SubSD Terrakion and Gothitelle (as mentioned by PK Gaming).

This analysis hasn't been touched in a really long time, and Agility Lucario was always a questionable Pokemon so i'm locking this. PM me if you intend to do something about it (revive it, work on, etc).